“Media Violence Affects Inner-City Youth” -- Mooney-McCoy, Caleb

http://www.urbanministry.org/effects-media-violence-inner-city-youth

This was more of a personal article talking about the desensitizing issue with the media. After witnessing a young man bleed to death on a street corner, Mooney-McCoy listened to the off-hand responses of youth and his own surprisingly calm reaction to the scene. Mooney-McCoy tied these “callous attitude[s]” back to the fact that daily, Americans are subject to stage-deaths in media that they think is realistic in society. Looking at children’s exposure to violent television programming, Mooney-McCoy wrote,“....the show being watched is extremely violent, and young people might know that the television program is made up, [but] they believe that the violent act most definitely could happen in real life.”

It is not only the amount of violence in media, but the way it is portrayed. Mooney-McCoy wrote:

"The greater concern about these programs is the way that violence is presented. Most graphic or violent material is glorified. Nearly half of violent interactions involve perpetrators who have some attractive qualities worthy of emulation, particularly for young people. Furthermore, 75 percent of all violent scenes featured no immediate punishment or condemnation for the violence."

I have never witnessed a scene like the one Mooney-McCoy did in this article, but reading this made me wonder what my reaction would be. I'm sure I'd be in shock, but would I be as effected as I think I would prior to the scene? It is very true how media desensitizes people. Even in myself, I can watch peoples heads get chopped off (very realistically) and merely flinch before moving on to the next violent act in a film. Everything happens so quickly in action flicks that we start to associate short lived reactions with decapitated heads flying about because we know that there's more to come.